A network device, such as a router or a switch in a network system receives packets from a number of ingress ports and forwards the packets to a number of egress ports. The network device determines the egress port to forward data packets to, dependent on the destination address included in the data packets. Typically, the source of the packet may be connected to a network device, which in turn may be connected to a number of other network devices for forwarding data packets to a network device connected to a destination. The source may be a client or a server. Similarly, the destination may be a server or a client, or vice versa. In certain implementations, several parallel paths may exist between the source and the destination.